Angela Benton is a businesswoman from the United States born on May 22, 1981 in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
In 2011, Benton founded NewME, the world’s first startup accelerator for minorities.
Angela Benton is a diversity pioneer and one of the most influential African-Americans in the technology industry. She has assisted minority-led technology companies in raising more than $47 million in venture capital funding.
Angela Benton’s Career
Black Web 2.0
In August 2007, Benton launched Black Web 2.0. The site is said to have been launched as a result of her frustration with finding information on what Blacks were doing in technology, both entrepreneurially and corporately.
The site quickly grew in popularity among Black digerati and early adopters, providing them with a platform to be heard and featured. Markus Robinson, a site partner and COO until 2010, was instrumental in the platform’s growth.
Benton, along with Robinson, served as the site’s editor and main writer in the early days, and used the platform to feature and discuss key topics in Black Culture, technology, and where the two intersected.
The duo frequently critiqued products and digital strategies of African-American media companies and forecasted trends in the space, quickly becoming the leading experts in the space.
NewME accelerator
Benton launched the first NewME accelerator cohort in Silicon Valley in June 2011. Some of the technology industry’s most prominent figures took part in the program as mentors, speakers, or supporters, including Mitch Kapor, Ben Horowitz, Vivek Wadhwa, Google, Twitter, Andreessen Horowitz, Facebook, and others.
The program was largely responsible for igniting the discussion about diversity in the technology industry for both ethnic minorities and women. Some NewME alumni have gone on to work as venture capitalists at Kapor Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and TEDco.
Under her leadership, the company assisted hundreds of minority-owned businesses in raising more than $47 million in venture capital funding. In December 2018, Benton sold NewME.
The inaugural class of the NewME Accelerator was featured on CNN’s fourth installment of Black in America, which was reported by award-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien. Benton was featured as one of the documentary’s main subjects.
The documentary, which focused on the stories of eight NewME Accelerator participants who traveled to Silicon Valley to work on their startups, elevated the NewME Accelerator to a national level and sparked a heated industry debate about the lack of minorities in technology.
At the height of the debate, tech guru Michael Arrington, known for his off-color remarks, became a target for backlash on the subject.
Streamlytics
Benton founded Streamlytics in 2018 to democratize data collection. Streamlytics is a next generation data ecosystem that provides ethical, human-powered data. The company is the market leader in an emerging data category known as community driven data, which gives data ownership to the consumers who generate it.
Streamlytics focuses on providing data that better reflects the usage of people of color as well as providing financial compensation to users who choose to share their data. Issa Rae and The Savannah College of Art and Design are among the company’s investors.
Other
Angela Benton is a breast cancer survivor and entrepreneur who advocates for health and wellness. After being diagnosed with cancer in 2017, she wrote REVIVAL.
Angela Benton’s Awards and Recognitions
Benton’s achievements include being named one of Goldman Sachs’ 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs, Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology, and Business Insider’s 25 Most Influential African-Americans in Technology. Benton has appeared in a variety of national and international media outlets, including CNN’s award-winning documentary series America: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley, MSNBC, Bloomberg, Inc, Forbes, Good Morning America, and the Wall Street Journal, where she was a featured essayist for the paper’s 125th Anniversary edition on “The Future of Entrepreneurship.”
